


I know what it's like to love dangerous people (difference is, they love me back)

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Dysfunctional Family, Family Fluff, Gen, Good Sibling Allison Hargreeves, Good Sibling Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sibling Luther Hargreeves, Good Sibling Number Five | The Boy, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, Past Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch, Post-Season/Series 02, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Stuttering Diego Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Back in 1963, his siblings didn't stand up for him when Diego needed them to. When it happens again in 2019, they're going to correct that misstep, and make sure it never happens again.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	I know what it's like to love dangerous people (difference is, they love me back)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know why I wrote this. My mum and I finally finished watching season two the other week, and I think it was because I noticed that as an adult, Diego only stutters when he's distressed/upset? I don't know, I just wanted his siblings to make up for not standing up for him back at the dinner with their dad. I knew how I wanted this fic to go, but I lost traction during the argument, but I managed to get it back on track haha.
> 
> There is an antagonist in this fic named George Natsworthy. Was his name hell to type 100 time? Yes. Did I continue to call him Natsworthy purely for Five to call him Gnats-wothy? Also yes. And I think it was worth it. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy!!

Their afternoon lunch was supposed to be a rather pleasant affair. 

They made the unanimous decision to hunt out a rather empty but still relatively popular restaurant that they knew served good food and had employees that would bother them little, and together organized a day-out.

It was all going smoothly, at the beginning. Vanya had hidden behind her menu most of the time, the booklet almost bigger than she was, while Allison and Diego bickered playfully beside her, poking at each other and nagging at their choice of clothes. To his credit, Five sat back in his chair, arms crossed, but didn’t complain a single time, not even when Allison had to warn Diego to put a steak knife down. While Klaus was gone reapplying his eyeliner in the bathroom mirror, Luther ordered him a mocktail despite the shocked looks from the others. “What?” he asked as the waiter left with their orders. “It’s the same as those sweet things he likes, but without the alcohol. He probably won’t even know the difference.”

"I wouldn't be so sure," Diego said. "He's been drinking the hard stuff since we were kids."

But Luther had merely shrugged. "What's the worst that could happen?"

It had been a long while since they had all just sat down like this- like a family. Some longer than others. Some years. Some months. For Five, literal decades. And their individual experiences in 1963 were less than pleasant. Allison was happily married, and Vanya was a nanny on that farm. Klaus accidentally started a successful cult that he was very quickly sick of. Luther became a breadwinner, competitive boxer and bodyguard for Jack Ruby, Diego was thrown into an asylum for a full three months and Five was pulled from a lifetime in one apocalypse and thrust right into preventing the next ones. Everybody had highs than lows. Mostly lows.

But lunch was surprisingly good. The food was rolled out, piping hot and just as delicious as they had hoped, and the conversation was more civil than it used to be. Even when they were kids, they had never gotten to talk during meals with their father's iron rule, and when he wasn't around they were more likely to devolve into arguments and fist-fights than sit down for a quiet, and frankly enjoyable meal together. 

There was a lot of catching up. Klaus sipped at his mocktail and waved his hands about as he told them about his three years in the cult and what kind of mischief he and Ben had managed to get into. Luther told them what Jack Ruby was like around bites of food. Allison happily described what it was like to be married to a man who loved her for her, and how it felt to earn a living for people who saw her worth despite her loss of voice. Diego spoke stiltedly of the asylum and of Lyla and of the relationship that bloomed while they were locked up together. Vanya was more than eager to chat about Sissy and Harlan and her terrible husband, and what it felt like to finally feel loved, and how jarring yet obvious it fall in love with her in turn. Five was just more than happy to sit back silently and listen to them all speak amongst themselves, for the first time accepting that he missed every part of them- even their mind-numbing rambling.

“Harlan liked his music,” Vanya was saying. “They had this old record player that he could sit at all day if you let him. He was really smart, despite what Carl would believe.”

“And what was it like actually living on a farm?” Allison asked, leaning forward.

“It was interesting. Quaint,” Vanya said. “Sissy did a great job of making me feel at home, despite the fact that she hit me with her car and then I was suddenly just _there_.” She turned to Luther. “You were a boxer, right? How many fights did you win?”

“All of them but one,” Luther said, slightly hiding behind his glass of water. “And the one I lost, I lost because I saw all of you for the first time, and I was fired because of it.”

“You’re welcome,” Klaus said sincerely. “Nobody wants to be working for a dude like Jack Ruby, even if you are just throwing your weight around.”

Allison rose her eyebrows. “Says the known tax evader,” she murmured around her straw.

But Klaus didn’t look dissuaded. “None of my money was actually mine, Allison. From the moment I got there, I won an impressionable cougar over with my irresistible charms and from then onwards, she looked after me like I was her own. Gave me a mansion and everything. I was living the high life for three years while the rest of you had to put the _effort_ in and _work_.” He shivered.

“I’m sure you were,” Five said sarcastically. 

Klaus elbowed Diego in the side, and Diego looked away from a loose thread in his shirt to glare at him. “Considering this guy spent the whole three months in a nut-house, I think I did alright for myself.”

“Thanks, Klaus,” Diego sighed. “Thank you for reminding me.”

“No sweat,” Klaus said around a mouthful of food. “I bet it’s nice getting a full meal for once, huh? I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that living on the street for most of your life is almost as bad as being trapped in an asylum because you’re a little bit crazy.”

Humming, Diego picked up the butter knife on the side of his plate and twirled it around in his hand. “I still haven’t forgiven you for what you did,” he pointed the knife at Five. 

Five sighed heavily as if he had already had this argument many times. “You were being _irrational_.”

“I thought you were dead,” Diego protested. “And what did you do? You convinced them to drug me and lock me in a padded cell in a straight-jacket, like a criminal, or a nut-case, when there was _nothing wrong with me.”_

“I haven’t heard _this_ story,” Vanya laughed, covering her hand with her mouth. Klaus’s eyes widened in excitement as he prepared to tell the story, and Diego shut his eyes and sighed as he realized that he couldn’t escape.

Her laughter came to a sudden stop as she caught sight of a blond-haired man with a cocky grin approaching them from a separate table, hair cut short and shirt buttoned and ironed impeccably. From where he came from, a group of other men watched him, dressed similarly and with matching jackets slung over the back of their chairs, exchanging looks and watching intently, hiding sniggers behind their hands. “Uh, guys? This feels like trouble.”

The others turned to look, but a hand landed on Diego’s shoulder before he could get the chance. His hand instinctually tightened around the handle of the butter knife. 

“Can I help you?” Diego said lowly without turning around.

“Yeah, actually,” said the guy, sounding friendly but not at all trustworthy. “I think I know you. Diego Hargreeves, right? The superhero. We go to the same academy. You’re a big deal around there.”

Sensing a trap, Allison narrowed her eyes. “And you are…?”

“George Natsworthy,” he said, standing straighter. 

“And to what do we owe this unwanted, unfortunate interruption, Mr Gnats-worthy?” Five asked, indifferently, as he began to flick through the morning newspaper that was strategically placed on every table.

Natsworthy resolutely ignored him in favour of leaning closer into Diego’s space. Luther tried to wordlessly urge him not to reach for any of the sharper, more lethal knives strapped to his thighs and chest. “Officer Patch spoke a lot about you, you know. You’re a big name around the station and the academy. The guy who flunked out, the one who stole police-issued radios and played super-hero in the dark behind everyone's backs.”

“She said that huh?” Diego ground his teeth, looking deliberately at the wall above Vanya’s shoulder.

“Nicer, maybe, but yeah. She said a lot of things,” Natsworthy said. Five slowly lowered his newspaper to peer over the top of it. Vanya had frozen in shock. Klaus sipped obnoxiously through his paper straw. “Most of them were pretty positive, mind you, but the ones that really stuck out to us were the ones that made us laugh. She said that you were close to your mother. Like, _so_ close. A little obsessively close, which we thought was adorable. The hardass Diego Hargreeve, a _total_ mamas boy. Who knew, huh?”

Diego stayed resolutely silent, his grip so tight on the butter knife that it was a wonder he hadn’t bent it yet. 

“She also said that you had this… I don’t know, this condition?” Natsworthy waved his hand absently as he thought, almost as if he could pluck the word out of the air. “A pre-pubescent stutter that followed you into adulthood of some kind. I _assume_ that it stemmed from a condition. It had to right? I’m not sure, this was a long time ago now.”

“Uh-huh,” Diego ground his teeth. “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, let me save you the trouble and just stop you now-”

“Is it true that you killed her?”

That was the straw that broke the camels back. Diego whipped around so hard that Natswothy had to take a step back to avoid being hit by Diego’s jerking elbow. Vanya was covering her mouth with a hand. Allison bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood and the edge of the table creaked in anguish as Luther’s fingers dug into the wood. Five lowered the newspaper, his eyes terribly, frightfully cold. Klaus’s straw fell from between his lips, and he looked between Diego and George slowly, before reaching across and placing his stake knife close to Diego’s hand.

“W- _what_ did you just say?” Diego demanded, seething with very visible anger. 

A cruel, savage smile slithered across Natsworthy’s face like a venomous snake, the fake-demeanour of respect and kindness falling away to reveal something vicious and brutal. “Yeah, that's the stutter she told us about,” he grinned. “You know, your prints were all over her body when they found her, and you were hunting those two guys. We had bets going on whether or not you would run from the cops when they arrested you. I just wanted to thank you for winning me fifty bucks.”

Diego made to stand up from his chair in a blaze of righteous fury, but Luther was faster, and Diego was wedged back by Luther’s sheer size as he stood up so fast that his chair toppled backwards and he used his bulk to shield Diego from Natsworthy- or, rather, to shield Natsworthy from Diego.

Natsworthy had obviously been expecting a fight with Diego but was severally unprepared for the sheer size of Luther standing in his way, large and towering over him by a good several feet. He stumbled back a few steps and had to crane his neck to look up into Luther’s face. This was very clearly not going the way he had expected it to. Slowly, Diego lowered himself back down to his seat, staring venomously at Natsworthy from under Luther’s arm, and with Klaus’s prompting, wrapped his fingers around the steak knife in a white-knuckle grip.

“I don’t think that you really thought this plan through,” Luther said lowly, somehow becoming every inch the giant he was, minus the ‘friendly’. “And if you want my advice, I would go back and sit down and act like none of this ever happened, or you might come to realize that Diego is actually the _nice_ sibling.”

Despite how frightened he looked, Natsworthy had the gall to scrounge up a fighting stance. “Who the hell do you think you are, King Kong?” he pushed Luther, hard, in the shoulder.

Had it been literally anybody else in the world, he would have knocked them flat on their ass. But Luther didn’t budge, and he scowled as he picked Natsworthy up with one hand, hovering him above his head. Natsworthy screamed and the entire restaurant turned to look. “I wasn’t lying when I said that Diego was the nice one. You made a big mistake. You should have taken my advice.”

“Come on, dude, how stupid can you get?” Klaus scoffed as he plucked food off his plate and dropped it delicately into his mouth. “I mean, you look dumb as bricks, but you should know that if you’re going to pick a fight with a super-powered badass- which is already a bad idea- you tease the dude wearing the bunny slippers out to lunch,’ With that, Klaus rocked back on his chair and folded both his legs over on the table. He was, indeed, wearing fluffy white bunny slippers. “That’s something you learn day one at the station, right?”

“Did you even _know_ Eudora?” Allison demanded, and Natsworthy’s wide, frightened eyes darted to her. “Or did you just hear rumours, and decided to tarnish her name and reputation just so you could get a kick of embarrassing a good cop and an even better man?”

Natsworthy made to answer, but Luther shook him and he bit his tongue instead, letting out a strangled squeal.

“This pea-brained idiot couldn’t have come up with a scheme like this on his own,” Five said idly. “I’ll be back. You guys deal with him, while I go and deal with the masterminds who have been staring at us from the moment he walked over here.”

In a blink of blue light, he was gone from his seat, the newspaper falling limply down onto the table. A sucking sound from the other side of the room alerted them to Five's reappearance and they glanced over to see him sitting cross-legged in the middle of the table that seated all of Natsworthy's academy buddies, boredly admiring his nails. They leapt away from him with a startled yelp as he appeared, and he idly spun a ladle on the table as he spoke. His siblings had no doubt that he could kill every one of them with just that ladle alone.

Klaus watched him for a moment before he turned back to Natsworthy with that crazed, high-pitched giggle of his, drumming his long, perfectly manicured nails on the table. "I bet you're really regretting waking us this morning, hey Georgie?"

Watching Diego seated there, looking confused and apprehensive and just plain angry, Vanya reached across the table, and wrapped her hand around Diego’s wrist. He glanced at her, but he didn’t release his grip on the knife. “You stutter when you get upset,” she whispered to him over Natsworthy’s yelping. “I don’t know if you noticed it, but we have. So don’t worry.”

Diego balked, looking both horrified and embarrassed at the same time. “What the h-hell is that supposed to mean?”

A small, sympathetic smile spread across Vanya’s face, and she gently patted his wrist. “It means we understand now,” she said. “And that we’re never going to let what happened back then happen ever again.”

Luther swivelled Natsworthy around to face Allison, looking bored. “What do you want to do with him, Allison? I’ve got some ideas, but you’re smarter than me.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Allison said slyly as she leant back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest, looking Natsworthy’s writhing form over with disdain. “But you’re right, I do have some fun ideas. But don’t you want to embarrass him first?”

“I think the two of you are doing a pretty good job of that,” Klaus said wickedly. “Or, if you’d like, you could hand him over to me and I could really show him a good time, huh? And by _‘good time’_ , I mean _‘ruin his whole fucking life’_.”

“ _Klaus_ ,” Diego chastised, glaring in his direction. Klaus shrugged, unphased. “Luther, come on. That’s enough. Just put him down, for god's sake. He’s just a moron who picked a fight with the first person he saw. There’s no need for all of this.”

But he was ignored. “I don’t know, Diego. I’m having a lot of fun here,” he brought Natsworthy closer to him and growled in his face. “And I could do this all day.”

Natswothy squealed in abject terror.

There was a commotion from the corner of the room, and they turned to see Natsworthy’s group of friends hurriedly standing from their chairs, wood scraping and cutlery clattering on dishware. They watched the group scramble up and scuttle out of the restaurant, stumbling over their feet and pushing past each other in their haste to escape the situation. Five scoffed before he blinked back to his seat between Allison and Vanya, chuckling softly to himself. Something metallic and heavier than a ladle landed back on the other table now that Five was no longer holding it.

“I quite enjoyed that,” He said as he re-adjusted his hair. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten the chance to threaten bodily harm to a bunch of egotistic, narcissistic morons.”

As Natsworthy’s eyes darted hopelessly between Five and Diego and Allison and Luther, and sometimes even to Klaus, who had taken a knife from the table and was cleaning his cuticles with the blade but opened his mouth to find himself unable to speak when Luther shook him again. “What are we going to do with you, now?”

“I have a plan,” Allison said, resting a hand on Luther’s elbow, and gradually, Luther lowered a petrified Natsworthy closer to her. He looked at her with wide, frightened eyes. She laughed. “You’re not so brave now, are you?”

Luther finally put Natsworthy down, and still had to hold him up by the collar when Natsworthy’s legs were no longer able to carry him. “Whatever you’re planning, you better do it quickly,” Vanya warned wearily. “People are starting to stare.”

“They’ve been staring at us for ages,” Allison assured her before leaning in closer so she could whisper in Natsowthy’s ear. “ _I heard a rumour_ that you never heard of the names Eudora Patch or Diego Hargreaves. You remember everything that happened today, but you won’t know why you did what you did, and you’ll never forget it.”

Natsworthy’s eyes went snow-blind, his head slightly tilted backwards, before he blinked and straightened up, looking around at the situation in situation and regret. “I…”

“You should go,” Vanya said sternly in that quiet, intense voice of hers. Somehow, despite how softly she spoke, her words impacted like a punch. “Right now.”

As quickly and suddenly as he arrived, Natsworthy turned on his heel and bolted passed Luther’s hulking form, almost falling head-first over the rug, and out the front door again. Soon, it was as if he was never there at all. 

Slowly, Luther sat back down and picked up a piece of bread from the centre of the table, slathering it in butter and acting as if nothing had happened. Diego looked incredibly tense and incredibly lost. Five became aware of all the patrons of the restaurant looking at them like zoo animals and scowled. “Can I help you? Stop staring at us before I gouge your eyes out with a rusty spoon. I’m sure you’ve got many other things to be looking at. Some people have no self-respect.”

At once, the nosey onlookers returned to their meals and their own conversations, trying and mostly succeeding to block out the family from their view.

Diego looked at each of his siblings in turn, shocked down to his very core, as they now resumed their lunches and acted as if nothing ever happened. “You guys really didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah we did,” Allison said simply.

“You really didn’t,” Diego argued. “Now that guy is scared out of his mind and the whole restaurant thinks that we’re a bunch of freaks.”

“We are a bunch of freaks,” Klaus pointed out.

But Diego still didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked lost, almost like he had walked into a snowstorm, got completely turned around, and had no idea where north was. He bit his lip and stared back down at his plate, his meal feeling heavy in his gut. “Don’t worry, Diego,” Vanya assured. “You really have nothing to worry about. We didn’t hurt anyone and it’s their fault for coming over here and thinking that he could do that to you without any kind of reaction.”

“And you didn’t stab anyone, so that’s a bonus,” Klaus interrupted with his mouth full.

Shaking his head, Diego picked up his fork and played with his food. “It wasn’t worth it. You really should have just left it. He would have gotten bored sooner or later and we all could have gone back to our lives.”

Five sighed heavily. “Oh, for god's sake, shut up and eat your lunch, Diego.”

Blinking, Diego looked at him. Five paid him no attention. Allison bit her lip to keep herself from laughing as Diego slowly returned his attention to his plate. “If I’m being honest,” Luther said, leaning over to speak quietly to Diego. “I think we’re all still feeling a little bit guilty about not defending you back in 1963 when we had that dinner with dad, so I guess we’re just making sure we don’t make the same mistake twice. Or, ever again, for that matter.”

“Well,” Diego muttered, voice sounding thicker than usual. Vanya smiled. “Thanks.”

Everyone returned to their meals, except for Klaus, who had reached the end of his drink and was sucking at the remains through the straw, a serious, thoughtful look on his face. “I don’t know about any of you, but this drink tastes deceptively _mock-y.”_

Luther groaned in defeat. Diego barked a laugh and the heavy fog from the previous altercation left him like the popping of a bubble as he smacked Luther in the chest with the back of his hand, leaving Klaus to scowl and complain about the unfairness of his fun-hating siblings, for Five to mutter obscenities under his breath, for Allison to roll her eyes in mirth, and for Vanya to laugh lovingly at all their antics. Diego almost felt like he was home.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone confused, the seating arrangement goes like this:
> 
> Diego's back is to the door, so from his left, it goes Luther -> Allison -> Five -> Vanya -> Space for Ben (no chair but a space) -> Klaus.  
> They're all seated in a circle. Luther only has to stand up to block Diego from Natsworthy, and Vanya has to reach across the table to touch Diego's wrist, but Klaus can easily hand Diego the steak knife. Their table is in the near-centre of the room, while Natsworthy's table is behind them, closer to the door, which is why Diego didn't see him approach. It's not important, but if you want visuals, that's how it is.


End file.
